Watt, J 2

James Watt

James Watt FRS, FRSE (/wɒt/; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819)^[a] was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.

While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology of steam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and reheating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. Eventually, he adapted his engine to produce rotary motion, greatly broadening its use beyond pumping water.

Watt attempted to commercialise his invention, but experienced great financial difficulties until he entered a partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775. The new firm of Boulton and Watt was eventually highly successful and Watt became a wealthy man. In his retirement, Watt continued to develop new inventions though none was as significant as his steam engine work.

As Watt developed the concept of horsepower,^[1] the SI unit of power, the watt, was named after him.

Biography

Early life and education

James Watt was born on 19 January 1736 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, the eldest of the five surviving children of Agnes Muirhead (1703–1755) and James Watt (1698–1782).^[2] His mother came from a distinguished family, was well educated and said to be of forceful character, while his father was a shipwright, ship owner and contractor, and served as the Greenock's chief baillie in 1751.^[2][3] The Watt family's wealth came in part from Watt's father's trading in slaves and slave-produced goods.^[4] Watt's parents were Presbyterians and strong Covenanters,^[5] but despite his religious upbringing he later became a deist.^[6][7] Watt's grandfather, Thomas Watt (1642–1734), was a teacher of mathematics, surveying and navigation^[2] and baillie to the Baron of Cartsburn.^[8]

Initially, Watt was educated at home by his mother, later going on to attend Greenock Grammar School. There he exhibited an aptitude for mathematics, while Latin and Greek failed to interest him.

Watt is said to have suffered prolonged bouts of ill-health as a child and from frequent headaches all his life.^[2][9]

After leaving school, Watt worked in the workshops of his father's businesses, demonstrating considerable dexterity and skill in creating engineering models. After his father suffered unsuccessful business ventures, Watt left Greenock to seek employment in Glasgow as a mathematical instrument maker.^[2]

James Watt by John Partridge, after Sir William Beechey (1806)^[10][11]Bust of Watt in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

When he was 18, Watt's mother died and his father's health began to fail. Watt travelled to London and was able to obtain a period of training as an instrument maker for a year (1755–56), then returned to Scotland, settling in the major commercial city of Glasgow, intent on setting up his own instrument-making business. He was still very young and, having not had a full apprenticeship, did not have the usual connections via a former master to establish himself as a journeyman instrument maker.

Watt was saved from this impasse by the arrival from Jamaica of astronomical instruments bequeathed by Alexander MacFarlane to the University of Glasgow – instruments that required expert attention.^[12] Watt restored them to working order and was remunerated. These instruments were eventually installed in the Macfarlane Observatory. Subsequently, three professors offered him the opportunity to set up a small workshop within the university. It was initiated in 1757 and two of the professors, the physicist and chemist Joseph Black as well as the famed economist Adam Smith, became Watt's friends.^[13]

At first, he worked on maintaining and repairing scientific instruments used in the university, helping with demonstrations, and expanding the production of quadrants. He made and repaired brass reflecting quadrants, parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes, and barometers, among other things.’

...

Watt and the kettle

There is a popular story that Watt was inspired to invent the steam engine by seeing a kettle boiling, the steam forcing the lid to rise and thus showing Watt the power of steam. This story is told in many forms; in some Watt is a young lad, in others he is older, sometimes it's his mother's kettle, sometimes his aunt's. Watt did not actually invent the steam engine, as the story implies, but dramatically improved the efficiency of the existing Newcomen engine by adding a separate condenser. This is difficult to explain to someone not familiar with concepts of heat and thermal efficiency. It appears that the story was created, possibly by Watt's son James Watt Jr., and persists because it is easy for children to understand and remember.^[18] In this light, it can be seen as akin to the story of Isaac Newton and the falling apple and his discovery of gravity.

Although it is often dismissed as a myth, the story of Watt and the kettle has a basis in fact. In trying to understand the thermodynamics of heat and steam, James Watt carried out many laboratory experiments and his diaries record that in conducting these, he used a kettle as a boiler to generate steam.^[19]

Early experiments with steam

[

James Eckford Lauder: James Watt and the Steam Engine: the Dawn of the Nineteenth Century, 1855 Original condenser by Watt (Science Museum)

In 1759, Watt's friend, John Robison, called his attention to the use of steam as a source of motive power.^[20] The design of the Newcomen engine, in use for almost 50 years for pumping water from mines, had hardly changed from its first implementation. Watt began to experiment with steam, though he had never seen an operating steam engine. He tried constructing a model; it failed to work satisfactorily, but he continued his experiments and began to read everything he could about the subject. He came to realise the importance of latent heat—the thermal energy released or absorbed during a constant-temperature process—in understanding the engine, which, unknown to Watt, his friend Joseph Black had previously discovered years before. Understanding of the steam engine was in a very primitive state, for the science of thermodynamics would not be formalised for nearly another 100 years.

In 1763, Watt was asked to repair a model Newcomen engine belonging to the university.^[20] Even after repair, the engine barely worked. After much experimentation, Watt demonstrated that about three-quarters of the thermal energy of the steam was being consumed in heating the engine cylinder on every cycle.^[21] This energy was wasted because, later in the cycle, cold water was injected into the cylinder to condense the steam to reduce its pressure. Thus, by repeatedly heating and cooling the cylinder, the engine wasted most of its thermal energy rather than converting it into mechanical energy.

Watt's critical insight, arrived at in May 1765 as he crossed Glasgow Green park,^[22] was to cause the steam to condense in a separate chamber apart from the piston, and to maintain the temperature of the cylinder at the same temperature as the injected steam by surrounding it with a "steam jacket".^[21] Thus, very little energy was absorbed by the cylinder on each cycle, making more available to perform useful work. Watt had a working model later that same year.

The ruin of Watt's cottage workshop at Kinneil House^[23]Cylinder fragment of Watt's first operational engine at the Carron Works, Falkirk.

Despite a potentially workable design, there were still substantial difficulties in constructing a full-scale engine. This required more capital, some of which came from Black. More substantial backing came from John Roebuck, the founder of the celebrated Carron Iron Works near Falkirk, with whom he now formed a partnership. Roebuck lived at Kinneil House in Bo'ness, during which time Watt worked at perfecting his steam engine in a cottage adjacent to the house.^[24] The shell of the cottage, and a very large part of one of his projects, still exist to the rear.^[25]

The principal difficulty was in machining the piston and cylinder. Iron workers of the day were more like blacksmiths than modern machinists, and were unable to produce the components with sufficient precision. Much capital was spent in pursuing a patent on Watt's invention. Strapped for resources, Watt was forced to take up employment—first as a surveyor, then as a civil engineer—for 8 years.^[26]

Roebuck went bankrupt, and Matthew Boulton, who owned the Soho Manufactory works near Birmingham, acquired his patent rights. An extension of the patent to 1800 was successfully obtained in 1775.^[b]

Through Boulton, Watt finally had access to some of the best iron workers in the world. The difficulty of the manufacture of a large cylinder with a tightly fitting piston was solved by John Wilkinson, who had developed precision boring techniques for cannon making at Bersham, near Wrexham, North Wales. Watt and Boulton formed a hugely successful partnership, Boulton and Watt, which lasted for the next 25 years.

First engines

Engraving of a 1784 steam engine designed by Boulton and Watt

Main articles: Watt steam engine, Watt's linkage, and Watt's curve

In 1776, the first engines were installed and working in commercial enterprises. These first engines were used to power pumps and produced only reciprocating motion to move the pump rods at the bottom of the shaft. The design was commercially successful, and for the next five years, Watt was very busy installing more engines, mostly in Cornwall, for pumping water out of mines.

These early engines were not manufactured by Boulton and Watt, but were made by others according to drawings made by Watt, who served in the role of consulting engineer. The erection of the engine and its shakedown was supervised by Watt, at first, and then by men in the firm's employ. These were large machines. The first, for example, had a cylinder with a diameter of 50 inches and an overall height of about 24 feet, and required the construction of a dedicated building to house it. Boulton and Watt charged an annual payment, equal to one-third of the value of the coal saved in comparison to a Newcomen engine performing the same work.

The field of application for the invention was greatly widened when Boulton urged Watt to convert the reciprocating motion of the piston to produce rotational power for grinding, weaving and milling. Although a crank seemed the obvious solution to the conversion, Watt and Boulton were stymied by a patent for this, whose holder, James Pickard and his associates proposed to cross-license the external condenser. Watt adamantly opposed this and they circumvented the patent by their sun and planet gear in 1781.

Over the next six years, he made other improvements and modifications to the steam engine. A double-acting engine, in which the steam acted alternately on both sides of the piston, was one. He described methods for working the steam "expansively" (i.e., using steam at pressures well above atmospheric). A compound engine, which connected two or more engines, was described. Two more patents were granted for these in 1781 and 1782.

Numerous other improvements that made for easier manufacture and installation were continually implemented. One of these included the use of the steam indicator which produced an informative plot of the pressure in the cylinder against its volume, which he kept as a trade secret. Another important invention, one which Watt was most proud of, was the parallel motion linkage, which was essential in double-acting engines as it produced the straight line motion required for the cylinder rod and pump, from the connected rocking beam, whose end moves in a circular arc. This was patented in 1784. A throttle valve to control the power of the engine, and a centrifugal governor, patented in 1788,^[27] to keep it from "running away" were very important. These improvements taken together produced an engine which was up to five times as fuel efficient as the Newcomen engine.

Because of the danger of exploding boilers, which were in a very primitive stage of development, and the ongoing issues with leaks, Watt restricted his use of high pressure steam – all of his engines used steam at near atmospheric pressure.

Patent trials

A steam engine built to James Watt's patent in 1848 at Freiberg in Germany

Edward Bull started constructing engines for Boulton and Watt in Cornwall in 1781. By 1792, he had started making engines of his own design, but which contained a separate condenser, and so infringed Watt's patents. Two brothers, Jabez Carter Hornblower and Jonathan Hornblower Jnr also started to build engines about the same time. Others began to modify Newcomen engines by adding a condenser, and the mine owners in Cornwall became convinced that Watt's patent could not be enforced. They started to withhold payments to Boulton and Watt, which by 1795 had fallen on hard times. Of the total £21,000 (equivalent to £2,310,000 as of 2021) owed, only £2,500 had been received. Watt was forced to go to court to enforce his claims.^[28]

He first sued Bull in 1793. The jury found for Watt, but the question of whether or not the original specification of the patent was valid was left to another trial. In the meantime, injunctions were issued against the infringers, forcing their payments of the royalties to be placed in escrow. The trial on determining the validity of the specifications which was held in the following year was inconclusive, but the injunctions remained in force and the infringers, except for Jonathan Hornblower, all began to settle their cases. Hornblower was soon brought to trial in 1799, and the verdict of the four was decisively in favour of Watt. Their friend John Wilkinson, who had solved the problem of boring an accurate cylinder, was a particularly grievous case. He had erected about 20 engines without Boulton's and Watts' knowledge. They finally agreed to settle the infringement in 1796.^[29] Boulton and Watt never collected all that was owed them, but the disputes were all settled directly between the parties or through arbitration. These trials were extremely costly in both money and time, but ultimately were successful for the firm.

Copying machine

Portable Copying Machine by James Watt & Co. Circa 1795

Before 1780, there was no good method for making copies of letters or drawings. The only method sometimes used was a mechanical one using multiple linked pens. Watt at first experimented with improving this method, but soon gave up on this approach because it was so cumbersome. He instead decided to try to physically transfer ink from the front of the original to the back of another sheet, moistened with a solvent, and pressed to the original. The second sheet had to be thin, so that the ink could be seen through it when the copy was held up to the light, thus reproducing the original exactly.^[30][31]

Watt started to develop the process in 1779, and made many experiments to formulate the ink, select the thin paper, to devise a method for wetting the special thin paper, and to make a press suitable for applying the correct pressure to effect the transfer. All of these required much experimentation, but he soon had enough success to patent the process a year later. Watt formed another partnership with Boulton (who provided financing) and James Keir (to manage the business) in a firm called James Watt and Co. The perfection of the invention required much more development work before it could be routinely used by others, but this was carried out over the next few years. Boulton and Watt gave up their shares to their sons in 1794.^[32] It became a commercial success and was widely used in offices even into the 20th century.

Chemical experiments

From an early age, Watt was very interested in chemistry. In late 1786, while in Paris, he witnessed an experiment by Claude Louis Berthollet in which he reacted hydrochloric acid with manganese dioxide to produce chlorine. He had already found that an aqueous solution of chlorine could bleach textiles, and had published his findings, which aroused great interest among many potential rivals. When Watt returned to Britain, he began experiments along these lines with hopes of finding a commercially viable process. He discovered that a mixture of salt, manganese dioxide and sulphuric acid could produce chlorine, which Watt believed might be a cheaper method. He passed the chlorine into a weak solution of alkali, and obtained a turbid solution that appeared to have good bleaching properties. He soon communicated these results to James McGrigor, his father-in-law, who was a bleacher in Glasgow. Otherwise, he tried to keep his method a secret.^[33]

With McGrigor and his wife Annie, he started to scale up the process, and in March 1788, McGrigor was able to bleach 1,500 yards (4,500 feet) of cloth to his satisfaction. About this time, Berthollet discovered the salt and sulphuric acid process, and published it, so it became public knowledge. Many others began to experiment with improving the process, which still had many shortcomings, not the least of which was the problem of transporting the liquid product. Watt's rivals soon overtook him in developing the process, and he dropped out of the race. It was not until 1799, when Charles Tennant patented a process for producing solid bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) that it became a commercial success.

By 1794, Watt had been chosen by Thomas Beddoes to manufacture apparatuses to produce, clean and store gases for use in the new Pneumatic Institution at Hotwells in Bristol. Watt continued to experiment with various gases, but by 1797, the medical uses for the "factitious airs" (artificial gases) had come to a dead end.^[34]

Scientific apparatus designed by Boulton and Watt in preparation of the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol

Personality

Watt combined theoretical knowledge of science with the ability to apply it practically. Chemist Humphry Davy said of him, "Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very erroneous idea of his character; he was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical application".^[35]

He was greatly respected by other prominent men of the Industrial Revolution.^[36] He was an important member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, and was a much sought-after conversationalist and companion, always interested in expanding his horizons.^[37] His personal relationships with his friends and business partners were always congenial and long-lasting.

According to Lord Liverpool (Prime Minister of the UK),^[38]

A more excllent and amikable man in all the relations of life I believe never existed.

Watt was a prolific correspondent. During his years in Cornwall, he wrote long letters to Boulton several times per week. He was averse to publishing his results in, for example, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society however, and instead preferred to communicate his ideas in patents.^[39] He was an excellent draughtsman.

James Watt's letters from the Science Museum Library & Archives in Wroughton, near Swindon

He was a rather poor businessman, and especially hated bargaining and negotiating terms with those who sought to use the steam engine. In a letter to William Small in 1772, Watt confessed that "he would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain."^[40] Until he retired, he was always very concerned about his financial affairs, and was something of a worrier. His health was often poor and he suffered frequent nervous headaches and depression. When he retired in 1800, he became a rich enough man to pass the business on to his sons.

Soho Foundry

At first, the partnership made the drawings and specifications for the engines, and supervised the work to erect them on the customers' property. They produced almost none of the parts themselves. Watt did most of his work at his home in Harper's Hill in Birmingham, while Boulton worked at the Soho Manufactory. Gradually, the partners began to actually manufacture more and more of the parts, and by 1795, they purchased a property about a mile away from the Soho Manufactory, on the banks of the Birmingham Canal, to establish a new foundry for the manufacture of the engines. The Soho Foundry formally opened in 1796 at a time when Watt's sons, Gregory and James Jr. were heavily involved in the management of the enterprise. In 1800, the year of Watt's retirement, the firm made a total of 41 engines.^[41]

Later years

An 1835 painting of "Heathfield", Watt's house in Handsworth, by Allen Edward Everitt James Watt's workshop.

Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired. The famous partnership was transferred to the men's sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr.. Longtime firm engineer William Murdoch was soon made a partner and the firm prospered.

Watt continued to invent other things before and during his semi-retirement. Within his home in Handsworth, Staffordshire, Watt made use of a garret room as a workshop, and it was here that he worked on many of his inventions.^[42] Among other things, he invented and constructed machines for copying sculptures and medallions which worked very well, but which he never patented.^[43] One of the first sculptures he produced with the machine was a small head of his old professor friend Adam Smith. He maintained his interest in civil engineering and was a consultant on several significant projects. He proposed, for example, a method for constructing a flexible pipe to be used for pumping water under the River Clyde at Glasgow.^[44]

He and his second wife travelled to France and Germany, and he purchased an estate in mid-Wales at Doldowlod House, one mile south of Llanwrthwl, which he much improved.

In 1816, he took a trip on the paddle-steamer Comet, a product of his inventions, to revisit his home town of Greenock.^[45]

He died on 25 August 1819 at his home "Heathfield Hall" near Handsworth in Staffordshire (now part of Birmingham) at the age of 83. He was buried on 2 September in the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Handsworth. The church has since been extended and his grave is now inside the church.

Family

On 16 July 1764, Watt married his cousin Margaret Miller (d. 1773). They had two children, Margaret (1767–1796) and James (1769–1848). In 1791, their daughter married James Miller. In September 1773, while Watt was working in the Scottish Highlands, he learned that his wife, who was pregnant with their third child, was seriously ill. He immediately returned home but found that she had died and their child was stillborn.^[2][46]

In 1775, he married Ann MacGregor (d. 1832).^[46]

Freemasonry

He was Initiated into Scottish Freemasonry in The Glasgow Royal Arch Lodge, No. 77, in 1763. The Lodge ceased to exist in 1810. A Masonic Lodge was named after him in his home town of Glasgow – Lodge James Watt, No. 1215.^[47]

...

James Watt - Wikipedia

Sandbox

Knowledge Web Content (see main node)

Achievements: Steam engine

Born: January 19, 1736; Greenock, Strathclyde, Scotland

Died: August 25, 1819; Heathfield House, near Birmingham (Aged 83)

Field & Discipline: Engineering; Instrument Maker

Education: Greenock Grammar School

Major Work:

Invention of the improved steam engine and copier

Life & Times:

In 1754, Watt went to Glasgow where a member of his mother’s family helped him find temporary work as an optician’s assistant, but he soon found that no training was available in Glasgow and left for London. There, John Morgan, who traded in brasswork, took him on as a fee paying, unpaid trainee and he stayed for a year, learning the trade, before going back home, ill and exhausted.

Back in Glasgow, a collection of astronomical instruments arrived from Jamaica in 1756 and Watt was asked to carefully clean off the salt that had contaminated them while at sea. Many Glasgow scientists came to examine the instruments while the work was being done and were impressed with the standard of Watt’s work. Two people he met and befriended in this way were the Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University, [befriended by] Black* and his student, John Robison.

In 1757, [helped by] Adam Smith* arranged for Watt to be allowed to set up an instrument making shop within the University precincts. He was given the title ‘Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University.’ While he was making instruments for Professor Black, he learned about Black’s his discovery of latent heat. Watt’s most famous invention happened during the time he was working at the university. In 1763, Professor John Anderson asked him to repair a model of the [repaired pump by] Newcomen* pump and, while he was working on it, he found that the pump performed erratically and had heavy fuel consumption.

Because of this, Watt started to examine the properties of steam, boilers and pistons. Thanks to what he had learned from Black about latent heat, he was able to design a system to keep the pump cylinder hot, while sending the spent steam to evaporate in a separate condenser kept under chilled water. In this way the main cylinder was kept hot enough not to cause premature condensation on each cycle, when new steam entered. With help from [financial help from] Roebuck*, a friend of Joseph Black, Watt spent a great deal of time experimenting with the objective of building a full size engine. Finally, in 1767, the work was sufficiently advanced and Watt went south to England to apply for a patent. On the way back, he stopped off in Birmingham and met [partner of] Boulton*, an industrialist friend of Roebuck. He also met [met] Erasmus Darwin* and told him, in confidence, about his invention.

According to Watt’s 1769 patent, the manufacture of the new pump was to be in partnership between Roebuck, but, because he couldn’t see himself making much money with the pump straight away, Watt went back to the business of civil engineering and canal surveying. Between 1767 and 1774, he carried out surveys for the Caledonian Canal that runs from Inverness to Fort William.

Roebuck’s business collapsed in 1774, so Watt went into partnership with Boulton, with a plan to build a new steam engine at Boulton’s Soho Foundry in Birmingham. By 1776, they had produced a functioning machine, but it took another five years’ development before it was reliable and economical. When the new engine was nearly ready, the company received two orders, one from the ironworks of [client was] John Wilkinson*. His company had become involved in the development of the engine, when other ironworks had been incapable of boring out the engine cylinder with the required precision. Both engines produced for the first two orders were successful and other orders followed. Demand was high, mainly because of the fuel efficiency of Watt’s engine, which used only a quarter of the fuel of the old Newcomen engine on which he had improved.

Watt continued to carry out various upgrades until the 1790’s. One of these was to make the engine double acting, so that it operated on the return of the piston as well as on the forward motion. Watt designed an automatic centrifugal governor, which reduced the supply of steam if the engine was going too fast, and increased it when the engine slowed. Watt also designed an indicator able to measure the steam pressure, or the level of vacuum within the cylinder.

Watt’s employee, [employed] Murdock* developed [patented] ‘sun-and-planet’ gearing* that enabled rotary motion. This development played an important part in triggering the Industrial Revolution. Between 1775 and 1800, out of a total of 325 engines built by the Soho works, around 114 were for textile mills, of which 92 were used in cotton mills.

In the year Watt had patented his improved engine, [engine used by] Arkwright* designed a machine for spinning with rollers. The two inventions brought the development of a whole new industry, and the first steam-powered cotton mill began production in Nottingham in 1785, the same year that another rotative engine was set up at [engine used by] Whitbread’s* brewery in Chiswell Street, London.

Boulton & Watt began to produce steam engines for ships, and between 1794 and 1805, the American engineer [engine used by] Fulton* ordered engines for the steamboats he was constructing.

In addition to the steam engine, Watt invented a process for copying letters, which he used to help with the administration of his business. Later this was further developed by the American Cyrus P. Dalkin, and was in use until the development of the photocopier. One of the first orders for Watt’s copying machines, patented in 1780, came from Adam Smith.

In 1783, Watt determined the use of horsepower as a system of measuring power, to provide a systematic means of pricing machinery. He calculated that 1 horsepower was developed when a 33,000 pound weight was raised by 1 foot, just under a third of a metre, per minute, and this value was accepted until very recently.

Watt began to take a greater interest in chemistry when, through membership of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, he met [met] Priestley*. Other members and acquaintances included Erasmus Darwin, [met] Wedgwood* and the eminent chemists, [met] Lavoisier* and [met] Berthollet*.

In 1783, Watt hit on the idea that water was a compound rather than an element, so he submitted a paper to the Royal Society. This caused a debate to determine who should receive the credit for discovering the composition of water, Watt, [row with] Cavendish* or Lavoisier. The outcome was that Watt was accepted as having first realised that water was a compound, but that Lavoisier had correctly determined its make-up.

During the 1780s, as well as engineering projects, Watt worked on experiments for bleaching textiles using chlorine, as did Berthollet in France.

In 1784 Watt was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and, the next year, became a Fellow of the [fellow of] Royal Society* in London. He spent most of the 1790’s in legal battles over the infringement of his patent on the separate condenser. He spent the last nineteen years of his life living and working in a house he built in Heathfield, near Birmingham, England.

Extra Connections:

His work related to that of [work related to] Trevithick*, [work related to] Smeaton*, [work related to] Savery*, [work related to] Rennie*, [work related to] Jefferson*, [work related to] Smithson* and [work related to] Neilson*.

The [used lamp by] Argand* lamp lit Watt’s factory.

Friend of physician [a pal of] Richard Bright*, geologist [a pal of] Hutton*

The engineer [apprentice was] Clegg* was his apprentice

Involved in the development of [worked on] gaslight*

Met US chemist [met] Silliman Snr*

[biography by] Smiles* wrote his biography

Engineer [employed] George Stephenson* serviced one of his engines.

Made the engines for the [engine-fitted] SS Great Eastern*

A descendant was [descendant was] Watson-Watt*

His engine was used on the first [engine used on] steam locomotive*

Assessment: The improved steam engine of James Watt is the cornerstone on which the modern technological world is built. His name was given to the watt, the unit of electrical power.

Oneliner: James Watt, who perfected the steam engine

Bibliography:

Dickinson, H. W., James Watt, Craftsman and Engineer, 1936.

Hart, Ivor B., James Watt and the History of Steam Power, Henry Schuman, New York, 1949.

Wikipedia

Video: Connections3ep1:

10/15 update:

Back in Glasgow, a collection of astronomical instruments arrived from Jamaica in 1756 and Watt was asked to carefully clean off the salt that had contaminated them while at sea.

Many Glasgow scientists came to examine the instruments while the work was being done and were impressed with the standard of Watt’s work. Two people he met and befriended in this way were the Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University, Black* and his student, John Robison.

In 1757, Adam Smith* arranged for Watt to be allowed to set up an instrument making shop within the University precincts. He was given the title ‘Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University.’

While he was making instruments for Professor Black, he learned about Black’s his discovery of latent heat. Watt’s most famous invention happened during the time he was working at the university. In 1763, Professor John Anderson asked him to repair a model of the Newcomen* pump and, while he was working on it, he found that the pump performed erratically and had heavy fuel consumption.

With help from Roebuck*, a friend of Joseph Black, Watt spent a great deal of time experimenting with the objective of building a full size engine. Finally, in 1767, the work was sufficiently advanced and Watt went south to England to apply for a patent.

On the way back, he stopped off in Birmingham and met Boulton*, an industrialist friend of Roebuck. He also met Erasmus Darwin* and told him, in confidence, about his invention.

When the new engine was nearly ready, the company received two orders, one from the ironworks of John Wilkinson*. His company had become involved in the development of the engine, when other ironworks had been incapable of boring out the engine cylinder with the required precision.

Both engines produced for the first two orders were successful and other orders followed. Demand was high, mainly because of the fuel efficiency of Watt’s engine, which used only a quarter of the fuel of the old Newcomen engine on which he had improved.

Watt’s employee, Murdock* developed ‘sun-and-planet’ gearing* that enabled rotary motion. This development played an important part in triggering the industrial revolution. Between 1775 and 1800, out of a total of 325 engines built by the Soho works, around 114 were for textile mills, of which 92 were used in cotton mills.

In the year Watt had patented his improved engine, Arkwright* designed a machine for spinning with rollers. The two inventions brought the development of a whole new industry, and the first steam-powered cotton mill began production in Nottingham in 1785, the same year that another rotative engine was set up at Whitbread’s* brewery in Chiswell Street, London.

Boulton & Watt began to produce steam engines for ships, and between 1794 and 1805, the American engineer Fulton* ordered engines for the steamboats he was constructing.

In addition to the steam engine, Watt invented a process for copying letters, which he used to help with the administration of his business. Later this was further developed by the American Dalkin*, and was in use until the development of the photocopier. One of the first orders for Watt’s copying machines, patented in 1780, came from Adam Smith.

Watt began to take a greater interest in chemistry when, through membership of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, he met Priestley*. Other members and acquaintances included Erasmus Darwin, Wedgwood* and the eminent chemists, Lavoisier* and Berthollet*.

In 1783, Watt hit on the idea that water was a compound rather than an element, so he submitted a paper to the Royal Society. This caused a debate to determine who should receive the credit for discovering the composition of water, Watt, Cavendish* or Lavoisier. The outcome was that Watt was accepted as having first realised that water was a compound, but that Lavoisier had correctly determined its make-up.

During the 1780s, as well as engineering projects, Watt worked on experiments for bleaching textiles using chlorine, as did Berthollet in France.

In 1784 Watt was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and, the next year, became a Fellow of the Royal Society* in London. He spent most of the 1790’s in legal battles over the infringement of his patent on the separate condenser. He spent the last nineteen years of his life living and working in a house he built in Heathfield, near Birmingham, England.

ASSESSMENT: The improved steam engine of James Watt is the cornerstone on which the modern technological world is built. His name was given to the watt, the unit of electrical power.

Father: James Watt

Mother: Agnes Muirheid (alternative spelling Muirhead)

Siblings: John

Spouse: 1) Margaret Miller (a cousin, married 1764, d.1773); 2) Ann McGregor (married 1773)

Children: James; Gregory